In his speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Vice-Presidential candidate Senator J.D Vance of Ohio excoriated the Democrats and presented as an alternative to their America one in which “people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts,”
Vance’s references may be Mom and Apple Pie and have been said similarly by previous Republican candidates for elected office, but it is clear, however, that he is as much critical of the “RINO” element of the GOP which has for decades declaimed loudly about abortion and American jobs and American values while making it apparent that their God is the God of the corporations.
They are among the people who Vance referred to as having helped to destroy his own home place of Middletown, Ohio, which he said had been “cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”
These were among the people who, along with Biden and the Democrats, supported the “disastrous invasion of Iraq” for little other reason than it made money for their friends. Vance has depicted the bipartisan support for the invasion as an example of the “stupid party and the evil party have gotten together to do something that is both stupid and evil.”
His and Trump’s view that it is not America or the West’s job to be intervening to impose values and systems on peoples who do not possess the cultural level of the Christian west will strike a chord. Especially when, as we know, those interventions have led to far worse outcomes even where they were not mainly motivated by naked self-interest.
The fact that Trump has even chosen Vance, a man once highly critical of the former President, holds out some hope for Trump’s instinct. Certainly, he knows that what appeals to middle and working class mainstream Americans of all backgrounds is what Vance embodies.
Vance has described the impact of neoliberalism on his own community and indeed his own family in his book Hillbilly Elegy. While it rehearses some of the themes he refrained in his speech – the regional economic collapse of American manufacturing and the consequent social and familial disintegration fuelled by fentanyl and alcohol which blighted his own family – he also stressed the need for communities to respond with dignity and a re-embracing of old values rather than state dependent self-pity.
But his take on all that goes beyond “what about the working man” soundbites, I think. For the moment and until shown otherwise I will take those ideas on face value. He spoke of standing up for working people against the corporations and against the transnational giants in support of American businesses that create jobs in America.
The suspicion of the mostly Democrat controlled unions remains strong as evidenced by the comment of Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar. It is a disjunct between the radical conservative sympathy for the working class and antipathy towards the union bureaucracy. Both in the United States and here that bureaucracy and the paid activists privilege liberal causes which not only have nothing to do with protecting the position of their members but which – most glaringly in the case of mindless union parroting of the establishment line on mass immigration -are inimical to those interests.
That odd contrast between conservative working pro-free enterprise America and Woke capital was recently and somewhat surreally captured by separate controversies involving the famous tractor manufacturer John Deere.
That company has been operating since 1837 and employs more than 80,000 people. At the end of June, John Deere announced that 600 of those jobs in Illinois and Iowa were being made redundant and that production was moving to Mexico. It had profits of more than $10 billion in 2023.
As if that was not sufficient to piss off middle America, John Deere at the same time was promoting an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy, abandoned yesterday coincidentally or not, that would not be out of place in any Athena SWAN captured Irish institution or leftie controlled student union.
Among their initiatives had been the funding of “cultural awareness” events and the setting of targets for workforce composition by race, gender and even non-binary metrics. The contrast between that and the ruthlessness of a corporate giant that has no compunction in eviscerating manufacturing towns in pursuit of a few extra cents on the dividend is glaring. It’s a schizophrenic worldview shared by some of our own bottom feeding “entrepreneurs”, as we have seen.
It will be interesting first of all to see how Vance might boost the Trump campaign. It might be the key to recapturing the midwest. If that campaign is successful, we might see a more proactive Vice Presidency, with a strong influence on how the next Trump administration deals with key issues.
One area that Vance might change is the lingering perception that the Republicans are ultimately the party of the vastly wealthy. In an interview with Politico, Vance said he supported the 2017 Trump/McConnell tax bill where it was “ “massively redistributive toward the lower- and middle-income brackets” but said that “cutting the top marginal rate” was not something he favoured.
Some among radical conservatives regard Vance as the means to push forward the Trump movement in that more positive direction. There is certainly a sense – and the fact that Trump’s nomination was only tamely resisted by the Cheney element is proof of this – that those who support Trump and Vance will not tolerate a return to the neo-liberal social destruction wrought by that faction.
We in Ireland are well behind the curve in this coherent redefinition of values and ideas and as the Independent Ireland debacle illustrates we have no coherent leadership nor even an agreed platform that might lend focus to what the June elections proved is a large and growing constituency of people seeking an alternative. As well to see the chancers exposed now rather than when they are in positions more powerful than a seat in the European Parliament.
The same measure needs to be applied to those who might regard that constituency as representing potentially ripe pickings for a repackaged Progressive Democrats. The asylum accommodation gravy train is our equivalent of the Haliburton RINO war profiteers. People’s stance on the legalisation of abortion on demand ought also be a defining issue. Where putative leaders have a poor record on these matters they deserve to be spurned. They had their chance and were found wanting.